There was a right answer to this. Kelly’s confidence rose. “Yes, I can. Please let me, you know how much Confibot means to me.”
“You say it means a lot to you, but from your performance, I have yet to see why. Convince me.”
“There’s so much we can do with it.” Kelly’s words came faster now as they pivoted to her work, flowing with liveliness and ease. Talking about Confibot brought out her fervor for science, awakening the little girl who used to take apart Gary’s Speak & Spell and rebuild it again and again until she knew exactly how it worked. “If we can create a fully convincing android, with which people can interact as if it were a human, we can take robotic caretaking to a whole new level. Users can develop meaningful relationships with their Confibots, making them true robotic confidants. If you look at the research about the effects of companionship and mental stimulation on health outcomes, the physical and lifestyle devastation of loneliness is astonishing, I mean, it can increase your risk of everything from dementia to heart disease to arthritis to—”
“Old people are a gold mine,” Anita mused, her eyes trained far out the window.
“I—I’m sorry?”
Anita sat up smoothly in her chair, focusing on Kelly. “The Baby Boomers are on the brink. When they crash, I plan to be ready to reap the dividends.” Not exactly how Kelly liked to think of her own work, but she bit her tongue. “Confibot’s commercial potential is massive, we both know that.” Anita waved a hand tipped with bone-painted nails. “The success of your project hinges on your ability to complete an android that can pass for human, and you’re the closest of our engineers to achieving that. And with that technology, we can go anywhere.”
“I am? I mean, I am. Thank you. It’s been thrilling to see how close Confibot is coming to real humanity, and I—”
“According to current projections, you’re the closest,” Anita corrected. “But other companies, even some of your own coworkers, have been logging astonishing progress as well.” Sitting back again, Anita looked pleasant, unhurried, yet still radiating a cool intensity.
Meanwhile, Kelly was sweating like a lumberjack. “Right, so … I’ll get back to it, then?”
“You are directly competing with these coworkers for investor funding,” Anita went on, as if Kelly hadn’t spoken. “And if you win the competition, you will be directly competing with the creators of every other robotic caregiver and assistant device in the world. The company that comes to market first gets to charge a premium. Anyone who lags behind has to cut prices to compete. So if you cannot make AHI the first to market, I will find another engineer who can.” She scrutinized Kelly with eyes that were impossible to read. “Confibot is the first project that you’ve spearheaded,” she noted. “Your first opportunity to bring one of your own ideas to life. As such, it requires high-level project management skills on which you have not yet been tested. You’re building more than a physical robot here. You are designing a whole person. And if you fail to make this work, you will not be afforded such a high-level opportunity again.” Kelly tried to gulp, but her throat was so raw, so dry, that it stopped halfway. “Robotics engineering is a human discipline, Kelly. It’s collaborative, it’s interpersonal. If you fail to think on this level, you will fail as an engineer.”
Every time Anita said the word “fail,” the blood in Kelly’s ears pulsed painfully hot. Her boss was calling her interpersonal skills a failure. Dr. Masden had called her pathologically antisocial. What was she doing wrong? Was she that incompetent at things that appeared so basic for everyone else? Was she writing her own doom in her career, her relationships? Would she push everyone away forever?
“I’m taking a sizable risk on you, Kelly,” Anita was saying as Kelly forced herself back to the surface.
“And I’m grateful for it. I won’t let you down.”
“No.” Anita looked at Kelly with a placid smile. “You won’t.”
Kelly held herself together long enough to make it out the door. As soon as she was down the hall, she allowed her knees to turn to jelly, pressing her back against the cool wall, lifting her face to the fluorescent-lit ceiling. She didn’t know what she was doing wrong, but it was clear that there was something. When she came to a dead end in her work—a limb moving at an unnatural angle, a memory fault—she would force herself to back out of the situation and look at it from a bird’s-eye view, searching for a new way in, trying something different. And here, she had to do the same thing.
When she walked back into the lab several minutes later, Priya was already there. She rose from her chair. “Finally, let’s get lunch. I was about to eat my intern. Also I have to show you these sick pictures my friend posted from this new club called Sadie Hawkins. I’d totally take you there if you weren’t still being No-Club Nancy.” Priya began fishing out her phone, but Kelly interrupted her.
“I’ll go.”
“What?”
Kelly looked at Priya with resolve. Here was something different she could try. It wouldn’t solve her problems with Confibot, but taking any action would make her feel better about herself right now.
“Let’s do it,” she said firmly. “This weekend, I’m ready to try out the clubs.”
Kelly’s second thoughts about this scheme hit her immediately. Priya buzzed for the rest of the week, ready to plan them the perfect night out, whipping out her phone at random moments to show Kelly the latest bar that they just had to try, or a Pinterest mood board of hairstyles that she knew Kelly could definitely rock. Priya went out with friends virtually every weekend, it seemed, but Kelly was her going-out white whale, and her electric anticipation of this weekend was at a high. Meanwhile, every time she brought up their plans, Kelly was vividly reminded of the last time they had gone out together, more than a year ago: she had ended up with her shoes in her purse, her drink in her lap, and her dignity somewhere in the next town. She may have tried to gaze flirtily at a man across the bar while drinking seductively from her cocktail and ended up sticking her straw up her nose instead. She chose not to remember.
Yet here she was Friday night, at Priya’s high-rise apartment in North San Jose, sitting squashed between pink, orange, and gold pillows on the bed while Priya battled wills with her eyeliner. “Are you sure you won’t let me do your makeup?” Priya asked.
“I already did it,” Kelly said, watching Priya attempt a winged eye with her liquid liner. Every time she fixed one eye, she had to add more to the other to even it out, and the effect was increasingly alarming. Kelly had already worked her way out of Priya’s offer to dress her by reminding her of what she did to her own clothing last time. She would be more comfortable in her own jeans and shirt. It was just a simple black top, but it had gold buttons on it, which she had convinced herself would demonstrate to the world that she was a free-wheeling partier.
“Finally you’re coming out again. We are going to scorch this club tonight,” Priya asserted, pausing to assess her handiwork. “We are going to slay on the dance floor. Flay on the dance floor. Flog it to a pulp.”
“Nasty.” Kelly wrinkled her nose.
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Priya urged. Kelly wasn’t sure that her definition of fun looked like Priya’s, but with “antisocial tendencies bordering on aggression” ringing in her ears, she knew that she needed to give it a try. Part of why she so seldom agreed to go out with Priya was because a night out with Priya was a night. As much as Kelly adored her friend, she was convinced that she was harmlessly certifiable. Her historic hijinks ranged from commandeering the PA system at the grocery store